How My Weight Loss Blog Survived Google Penguin

Most of you run your own blogs and are actively involved in some form of SEO so you probably have already an idea on the impact of Google Penguin update, which wreaks havoc on SERPS resulting in poorly-run web sites taking the leads on Google SERPS while high quality sites like yours and mine, have been dropped down.You may ask yourself, what on earth happened? Where is the common sense in the search engines? Are we at the mercy of some software engineers who love to experiment with a piece of software?

What Is Google’s Penguin Update?

The Google Penguin is an algorithmic update implemented by Google aimedto decrease the rankings in search engines of web sites that violate the Google guidelines set out for web masters. The idea is that Google increases the ranking of high quality websites and improves searchers experience. Whether they have achieved this or not is a topic for a different article. The question here is how your site is ranking after these updates?

How Is Your Web Site Affected By Google Penguin?

Google Penguin Update works in two ways:

Over-optimization of page: Well, if you are fond of using a lot of a main keyword such as on your page title, the metatags, H1 tag, and sidebar, then Google will consider that as the new keyword stuffing because to Google this seems unnatural. It is not natural for a web master to use one keyword in seven places for the whole week.

Over-optimization of anchor texts:Meanwhile, how do the backlinks affect the chances of getting affected by the Google Penguin update? You can get affected if you have used extensively keyword-related anchor texts in your back linking campaigns. Let’s use an example of my weightloss website where I promote Medifast coupons.Keyword back linking means that I create a big number of links to my page where the anchor text is the exact keyword match: “Medifast coupons”. Google also picks up variations of the same keyword such as “Medifast promotion codes” or “Medifast vouchers” or Medifast promo”. To Google this is all keyword related anchor text which is not natural when it dominates the anchor texts.

Google monitors your anchor text distribution and if you include your web site on Google Webmaster Tools it may show you that they have detected an odd anchor text distribution. Then the search giant may send you a message informing you that your links are not natural and you should fix them.

How Do I Fix My SEO?

First, if you are stuffing your blogs or articles with the main keyword for the rest of the week, youMAY have to undo a few of your onsite SEO. This can be a very messy job. But Google provides methods on how you should optimize your web site to rank high on its search engines. If you do not follow their policy, then you will definitely get the Google Penguin update sooner or later.

Second, you have to know that natural backlinks do not always contain a keyword text. If they do, the keywords are varied. Some of your anchor texts should also have your domain name www.yourURL.com. Natural links are words like “click here”,“read more”, “visit this site”, etc.

How to Avoid Google Penguin Update?

Generally, if there is one formula that could successfully beat the Google Penguin, the web masters will not share them with others because SEO is always a competition. But this is what you can do. Do not abolish your old backlinks because that would take you too much time. Rather, create new backlinks using the standards of Google as far as backlink distribution is concerned. If you create enough backlinks following the natural approach, they will even out the uneven backlink distribution. Then your backlink profile will start to appear natural to Google. Well, this is only a recommendation and not proven yet.

Good luck in your battle against the Google Penguin. Tell us what action have you taken to prevent your site from getting the Penguin “penalty”?

Richie Richardson is an Internet marketer. Occasionally he writes on topics like weight loss, Bistro MD diet and other related topics. You can also read more about diet and weight loss programs over here.